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The works of Chung
Sang-Hyun, who mainly uses plastic languages through meditation about life and universe,
are closely related to his original mentality. Some works in this exhibition
compared to the figure of whales are featuring his own experience.
The series of his works can be said
to be of the windows of mind on a serene voyage from his meditation on the clue
of life he has cherished without cease, asking about the solitary existence of
modern people.
Like the fate of whales that swim
through the abysmal blue sea, yelling out something that cannot be figured out,
his works of meditation series carry the simplified silence created by the
contemplation about human beings on a way, an evening glow, a morning glow,
song of birds, deep and blue night, serene voyage, etc.
His silence is generated from a
kind of tension and implies the awe towards the objects and phenomena of
universe and at the same time his own nature. His aesthetic languages of the
cosmos or generation and small fractions of mandala. The meditative forms and
the colors are made up of abstract languages reflecting his native breath sound
like a piece of child¡¯s poems.
The reminiscence of his special
affection towards animals comes from his father Chung Eun-Young and
grandfather, but Chun Sang-Hyun chooses such animals as whales or birds that
have the more direct meaning as a metaphor of his life while his late
grandfather and father regarded butterflies, cranes or snowy herons as the
objects of an aesthetic sense reflecting their mentality. In other words, his
animals are different in that they are represented as self-portraits of human
beings in the present times and also embody the existence of human beings
rather than the objects of aesthetic contemplation.
In technique he uses oriental
pigments and the composition is so quiet and refined, but his works indicate his
viewpoints or aesthetic sense of complexed composition of the Orient and the
West. Though this exhibition is the first one, the works seem to be in the
abstract of certain forms looking like remaining images of conceptual figures
floating through the pipe for a long time, the works have afresh sense and
positiveness to make certain of his unique methodology.
The works are mainly classified
into three titles of series of whales and birds, glows, and rainbows, the
abstracts of the Milky Way, a morning glow, and evening glow, dawn, etc. The
birds have the meaning of a fossile symbolizing humans and illusorily
describing the relations between extinguishment and life that the artist tries
to mention.
His works seem to be on the basis
of virtual images of dreams or frustration from the limited space produced by
the sense of extinction and the alienation of humans in urbanized society. As
mentioned above, the bent image of a whale under the sea emphasizes the
originality to express the refraction of objects which produces the strongest
impression of one aspect of traveling alone.
The refraction through meditation.
This is the very transformation of the most significant images and also mandala
Chung Sang-Hyun tries to express. His mandala indicates his own words of a
diagram which is associated with the colors or composition of a wrapping cloth
made in the absence of the worldly desires by our ancestors.
With the affirmative evaluation in
the viewpoint of the world, if his works are produced by his meditative
experience in his sights about the refraction of all the things including
refined linguistic system and the pictorial languages seeming to extinguish,
his works should take the constant and steady process of thinking as philosophy
that prepares the basis of the refraction of objects.
His works show the integrity
inherited from his father Chung Eun-Young and also present the question about
how well his viewpoint of nature and universe, namely our traditional legacy
and his own one is grafted to the late industrial society.
And additionally we should think of
the possibility to build up the modernistic structure through his secret
process in access to the common problems to be solved by the artists in our
times. It cannot be overlooked for the art world today to have not only the
possibility but also the practical problems just like the feelings from the
infinite journey of his whales.
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